Coronavirus III: The Charm

Welp...

I honestly have no idea why I'm here, here as in this website updating this blog with that old email address. I realized I hadn't updated in a while, and I feel like that's how I always start these posts. It's been a few months since our second wave, and now we're into our third. Hat trick! If you have no idea what I'm talking about, welcome back! I have some tough news for you and you may want to sit down but please do so at six feet away.

The pandemic has left me feeling...laughably defeated. In one week it'll be a year since IBM sent us packing. Well, not packing, but they sent us home not knowing when we would return. In the beginning, there was a lot of optimism. We'll ride this out the best we can and be back in the office by September! It's currently March and I'm still very much isolating in my home, and it's because the situation in the Czech Republic has become a catastrophic failure. 

We've had rules and restrictions against covid in place the entire time, but last September folks began scratching their chins no longer covered by masks and pondered why our once very good numbers (which only occurred when we followed the steps of every other country in Europe) were now quickly becoming very bad numbers. The Czech Republic at one point was actually the last country in the EU without a covid-related death. Pretty impressive for people who don't give the flyingest fuck about regulations in place or enforcing them. That public Prague dinner send off after the first wave really caught us with our pants down, probably because no one was wearing pants anymore.

When the second wave started to gather strength in mid-August 2020, I was sheltering myself before any restrictions were in place. And honestly my situation hasn't changed because I still don't have a choice. Regulations didn't need to be active for me to observe proper social distancing protocols and limiting my interactions with others. I didn't renew my tram pass because I hardly ever take public transportation enough to justify getting one. I wore my mask indoors and outdoors. I had opportunities to leave and go be social and frolic or whatever it is we used to do, but I didn't. My new normal was having each day be exactly like it was the day before. Around 5pm each day, I switch to my personal computer from my work computer and stay in the same place, typing at the same speed and visiting the same websites. 

While many new regulations have been introduced, they largely haven't affected my day-to-day Liz stuff. I'm still indoors, I still show up to work on time, I still need to tire Gossamer out around 11pm. I did get a blender in January and that was a real game changer diet wise. I got new glasses on a wild crapshoot spawned from an Instagram post I saw at 3am. I bought an obnoxiously loud Hawaiian shirt I definitely don't need. All this was orchestrated from the same table in my same apartment with the same movie on in the background. 

However, the third wave regulations are fierce, fierce because we can't afford to fuck this up again. We had two pretty good chances, but we burned that bridge during the public dinner on the literal bridge to celebrate "the end of coronavirus." Each county border is patrolled by police and/or the military. To enter the adjacent county, you need formal documentation from your employer. The curfew was mostly abolished as our freedom of movement is extremely limited anyway and we're not supposed to be out unless we're gathering supplies. Pretty much everything aside from grocery stores, mini marts, pharmacies, medical facilities, banks, and the post office is closed. You need to walk your dog within 1km of your home. We also need to wear ffp2 respirators. No more cloth masks, and if you don't have an ffp2, you can wear two surgical masks at the same time. Again, all these changes by and large don't affect me as a health-conscious person. What does affect me is the covid vaccine and when I can get it. 

The vaccine rollout in the Czech Republic has been horrendous. The first inoculated were citizens over the age of 80 and healthcare workers. Supposedly my group of "high risk" was also supposed to be included in that starting 1 January. But it's 5 March. We didn't purchase enough vaccines and we don't have the capability to store them. Other European countries are even donating vaccines to us. If Trump was still president he probably would have thrown paper towels at us. The Czech government is in talks with China and Russia about procuring some of their vaccines, and of course there's been a lot of push back from the Czechs. Russia anything is bad, and like...I get it. You don't just become a Soviet satellite state overnight (well, actually you do). This trend of dismissing the Russian vaccine because it's Russian seems silly. Some could argue science has taken the place of god in the Motherland over the last 100 years, and time and again they proved it, you know with that whole moon thing or whatever. There's also a crazy amount of xenophobia increasing above the usual levels here because the Chinese vaccine is Chinese, home field advantage for racists and coronavirus. But our hospitals are maxed out. High school kids are doing shifts in hospitals and doing on-the-spot training because our healthcare system is exhausted. Poland, Germany, and Austria have offered to take in Czech patients because there aren't enough people here to care for them, and you know you're fucked when Poland is the one offering to lend a hand. Acute procedures are getting cancelled in hospitals and clinics across the country, and we still can't wear our fucking masks right. 

A friend took this TODAY. TUH. DAY. We are one year into this thing and this woman, not only is she sporting a nose dick, but she's almost going out of her way to not wear it and is refusing to observe the structural purpose of the metal piece in the bridge of the mask. That's the point of the mask. One time use! More effective! YOU'RE SO CLOSE. 

Of course none of this is enforced. Obviously enforcement means money and money means...something here, I'm almost sure of it. Maybe a bribe would work instead... I'm not trying to insinuate this woman will kill people by nosing around while on public transportation. It's the careless, lazy attitude that's easily in view and adopted by others is what will kill more people. This is why I don't have a tram pass. This is why I leave my home once, maybe twice a week if it's absolutely necessary. I know what I can't be around, and it's been like this for one year. 

The good news (hahahahahaha) is that the vaccine registration website has recently been updated with information that may prove to be factual! Supposedly I can have a GP or a care specialist register on my behalf as they're more official than me. Imagine that, a doctor being more official than me, the woman who bought a Hawaiian shirt in January for no reason at all. I emailed my diabetologist with the information on the website in both Czech and English to nullify any translation errors. I realize I did this on Friday at 6pm, and I have inadvertently created a minimum of 48 hours of waiting time for myself, but it's the first step.

And that's all I can do. A lot of times I feel ultimately helpless. A couple of weeks ago I entertained the idea to fly back to the US to get the vaccine, but after some reflection on the logistics of what would be needed for this to work seamlessly (vacation time, no missed appointments, appointments happen as scheduled, open and available airfare, crossing borders, going through layovers and transit points not in the Czech Republic and abiding by their rules and restrictions, getting the negative test to travel and hope that will get me all the way through to Seattle, waiting the weeks between the two doses, isolating between doses in a safe environment) was really overwhelming. 

I know it's absolutely not healthy, but I caught myself doing the "man if times were normal and I had a lot of money, what would I be doing?" imaginary thinking that makes us immediately depressed. And while it was very escapist, it was pleasant to take a momentary break and think about owning a ranch in New Mexico and having one or two horses and some really big dogs and Gossamer, a wraparound Roche Bobois Mahjong sofa and a big telescope on the extended porch, an art studio set up for photography, painting, welding, and sculpture, a kiln, sprawling carpets, only wearing caftans with big glasses and no shoes except for cowboy boots, amateur archeology, huge windows to watch the thunderstorms in June, roasting pinion and maybe marshmallows, writing in front of a fire all year round, trail riding after breakfast, sometimes owls hide in the eaves, collecting arrowheads, roasting jerky in the smoker...

...or something like that. 

In this alternate fantasy where Liz has her shit together, I can never tell if I'm alone. I think it's because it's very selfishly me and it doesn't take anyone else into consideration. There's a difference between self care and being selfish. Is collecting arrowheads selfish? The jury is still out and very socially distanced on that one. I'd like to not be alone, but in this fantasy I'm alone. 

The part that hurts is that even if all of this was available to me, I'd probably still be doing what I'm doing right now: typing on a computer wishing I wasn't alone.

All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.

I'm writing under a very slanted wall in my new apartment. Over the last month, I've been taking one Ikea bag full of my shit for a 90 second bus ride and then up six flights of stairs to a flat which is tough to spatially navigate for the short and tall. If a hipster hobbit lived in Brno, they might have a place like this.

My favorite part of my new spot.

I returned my keys to the landlord of my first apartment in Brno this past Sunday. The Skacelova flat was my landing pad, my home base furnished with white leather couches and glass coffee tables. Over time I realized the comforts of that sizable flat was unnecessary for a single person plus cat and I was paying for a lot of space I wasn't using. I had an alcove with a desk and an entire living room I didn't sit in until six months after I arrived. These spaces collected dust and an unimaginable amount of cat hair during the year I inhabited the contemporary concrete dwelling and in an effort to save money and feel like I was really living in a space, I moved.

Looking for the right apartment took a few weeks. Time was of the essence during this point in the summer as it was right before the throngs of university students descended upon Brno for their careers in horticulture or veterinary science. Instead of being up against those living away from home for the first time, I decided to look earlier than I initially intended. I found a few places I really liked. I even told the real estate agents I met with "I'll take it!" more than once, only a few days later to discover it was given to someone else with no warning despite my firm and enthusiastic response. What was it going to take to actually secure an apartment in this city?

When I found the apartment I'm in now, I immediately fell in love with it. The walls are slanted and I have skylights for windows. There's no carpeting, and the space is just enough. I didn't want this apartment to turn out like the last few by slipping through my fingers, so if the Czechs wanted to play hardball, fine. It's supposedly my national past time. Why not make an attempt at getting what I want? I would be living in it, after all.

I pulled 10,000 crowns out of the bankomat at 8am and met with a real estate agent who could probably star in Real Housewives of the Former Iron Curtain. Her nails were very manicured and her strapless pink jumpsuit was usually seen poolside somewhere in Vegas. She and her tall hair led me up six floors to the flat I'm still struggling to name. After shaking hands, it became apartment she knew zero English and I could point at things and name them in Czech but was unable to create any concrete thought which conveyed meaning. But money doesn't need a language.

As soon as I saw the apartment met my minimal requirements of a separate bed space, washing machine, and walls I could drill into, I pulled out my cash and slid it across my new kitchen counter to the agent. She laughed as she outstretched her arm to count it and possibly make sure it's not counterfeit which I hear is still a thing here. She immediately wrote me a receipt and I had officially reserved the flat for September 1. I'm officially in and most of my things have a space of their own which isn't cluttered. Maybe I'll even buy a TV because

While I was sorting out moving from one flat to another, I made reservations to come home for the first two weeks of November. Thanksgiving and Christmas weren't available to take due to popular demand, so I inadvertently decided to travel during the most tumultuous week of the year: the midterm elections. I didn't even realize I had included this burgeoning clusterfuck in my travels until I gave my mom the dates of my visit. "You're going to be home during the election!" was the first reply I got to my news. Panekristo. I'm in a weird place with going home. I haven't told a lot of people I'll be in town with the exception of my family and a few close friends. I've been off Facebook for about three months meaning I didn't send out some pointless press release announcement to everyone in the digital ether. I haven't tried to book any shows or schedule things which can't be unscheduled. I've had 30-some Novembers in Seattle and this one probably won't be much different. I can honestly see it now: first I'm going to borrow my mom's car and hopefully remember how to drive. Then I'm going to go through the Starbucks drive-thru and go back home. And maybe I'll hit a mic or two. 

Right now I get the feeling I'm really rusty with comedy. When I first got to Brno I had to test out which material worked from home and which stuff didn't. I had to adapt certain jokes or completely forget others that relied too much on local references or inside jokes. I'll probably have to reformat what I've written here prior to going on stage in the back of a Thai restaurant. In my head it goes a certain way. I make an awkward joke about being away and I stumble through a combination of old and new jokes that don't work regardless of what country I'm in. Am I going to be judged? But I want the attention and validation of being on stage without having people look at me.

Better try stand up!

I know I seem pessimistic about returning, but I think it's because I don't know what to expect. I'm sure friends and family will be happy to see me and I'm sure I'll be consoling one or multiple family members on election night due to some fantastic upset we'll act like we didn't see it coming but in reality we were in the backseat as it had been careening out of control for months. I get to meet my niece Emily just in time for her very first birthday. From what I hear she's an extremely happy baby and kind of a ham. But as I'm writing this, I realize it's not even the actual visit back that I'm concerned about; it's getting through Heathrow in under two hours. 

In 1999 I spent six hours somewhere in the sprawling duty-free stress zoo of London-Heathrow. My family and I were returning from a trip to South Africa and Zimbabwe and the trip home to Seattle was roughly 36 hours starting from Livingstone, Zimbabwe. My only real memory of the seventh biggest airport in the world was that my mom bought a watch. Our layover was long, even by international standards, which meant shopping and ogling at things like cigarettes and booze, dormant items which would awaken in about five years. A silver Seiko, my mom bought. I'm not sure why that's the one memory I'm clinging to about this English detour, but that's all I got. 

To get back on track, holy shit it's a big place. The website for Heathrow is actually pretty adorable. There are a ton of little video tutorials on how to go through passport control, customs, how to get from terminal to terminal, take the Underground into the city, and where to exchange money. I plotted out my course and realized the last time I was making a connection was with two duffle bags and a cat on my back so this should be a bit easier. 

I've traveled enough to have developed habits along the way to ease the process and not stress out. Here's my foolproof to-do list:

1. Put your headphones in before you even get on the plane. Don't even listening to anything if you don't want to or need to keep your hands free from the Shuffle function. You know that guy waiting in line to board and you know he's just a chatty motherfucker by looking at him and his stupid jacket and utility vest with all the pockets? Don't risk it. This flight is 10+ hours and by no means can you speed it up. Chatting may make the time go faster,  but the last time I tried this I ended up sitting next to a Mormon guy ("Elder Matt") and he was very confused by the presence of a tattooed girl leaving the Tucson area and had to know more. If you don't want to talk, headphones. 

2. If you're in line for security and there's a sign that reads "you no longer have to remove your shoes or belts!", remove your shoes and belt. More than half the time people act like they can cruise through a metal detector when it's not like any of us have anywhere to be and the process slows to this unprepared passenger rubbernecking through zigzagging lines. The little Vietnamese kid making six cents an hour assembling your shoes probably didn't think the little piece of tin or aluminum wedged in between the arch and sole of your shoe was going to cause massive delays. But here we are, waiting on you because the signage stated our travel plans are impervious to hidden materials. Nope. Take 'em off. 

3. Buy shit when you get there. Every time I was traveling to Tucson, Los Angeles, or Minneapolis, I was having to buy tiny containers of bullshit every time, and I ended up buying more than I needed because what if three tiny containers of hairspray wasn't enough!?

At Target these little guys are $1.08 before tax. The average woman uses 7-8 products during her shower and beauty routine, and given the frequency I was flying, I didn't want to fork out money for every round trip flight, so I bought stuff and kept it where I was landing. But if you're booking a one-way to stay in a yurt out on the Mongolian steppe, good luck.

4. Schmooze with a flight attendant for extra perks. And if you're a dude I don't mean try to fuck one of the flight attendants. I just mean be nice to them and show them some extra courtesy while they're doing their job. And I understand being nice to someone on a long trip while 38,000 feet in the air can be demanding, but it doesn't have to be. On the trip from Seattle to Frankfurt, I had kitty underneath the seat in front of me and the seat next to me empty, leaving us considerable room to spread out in the luxurious world of Economy Plus. I stuck to the basic please and thank yous but also remembered to maintain eye contact and telling them I appreciate what they were doing for me. After a while, one attendant would "serve" the empty seat next to me so kitty and I would have extra potatoes, rolls, or teeny bottles of water. Other times an attendant I hadn't seen yet would appear from within the aisles and ask to see the hidden kitty at my swollen feet. Wo ist der katzen?

5. If you don't want to check a bag and have everything with you in the cabin, don't use a rolling rectangular suitcase. A habit I picked up from my dad is checking to see which kind of aircraft is taking me from A to B or A to B to C. You might have traveled in the past and realized with a pang of panic that you're suddenly taking a two engine prop plane to your final destination instead of the now seemingly luxurious 737-900. It was nice knowing you!

Travel with a backpack meant for light travel or for serious backpacking. If you don't overpack, the shape of the backpack can be malleable and more forgiving in unexpected spaces. You know that shitty little luggage test space (I'm seriously blanking on the name of this thing) where you try to squeeze your bag in to see if it's up to the airline's sizing standards? Never will you be asked to compare your luggage to this if you don't use a rectangular bag. You don't even need to get a serious hiking backpack, just something that lends enough support for your back and shoulders. Also you'll have both your hands free. AND you won't look like a doofus trying to figure it out how to get a rectangle into a rectangle. Get a backpack, shove that thing in the overhead bin and be done with it.

5b. Don't have a backpack but don't want to pay the $25 to check a bag? Carry it through security anyway and gate-check your luggage. 90% of flights offer to check your bag for you at the gate rather than at the check-in counter prior to security. Usually this happens because “aw wouldja look at that folks, we're oversold and need some volunteers to take advantage of this undiscovered trick we either haven't realized or chose not to tell you about!"

I've gotten to gates and been like "What do you mean it's too big?" Play dumb and volunteer. Don't forget to take out any medications, keys, chargers, etc before separating from your belongings.

Obviously a few of these are strictly for international flights, but yeah have at it. This is the closest I've come to giving advice on this blog for about a year, the last being "So you want to expatriate." I've lived in the Czech Republic for 352 days. 352 days ago, everything here was brand new. Little processes you'd gloss over and not think twice about took some major maneuvering. The simplest answer was never the easiest. The scenic route wasn't always scenic. I've cried at bus stops, on trams, and outside of hospitals at 2am. I've been yelled at in a few different languages, sometimes by a person in the immigration office, sometimes a person at the embassy. Someone told me I'd be home by March 28 because I would give up and want to come home. I fight for this because it's what I want. It's painful, exhausting, depressing, and discouraging at times. There are times when I've really wanted to pack it in and stick kitty back in his backpack and book a flight home. The inner child in me runs home to my mom for refuge, reassurance, and a good blanket. That inner child yearns for a bedtime story and for someone to tell her that just because things are unpredictable right now doesn't mean it won't be okay. 

There have times I've been unhinged and very un-Dude. Most of these situations involved a government or business entity leaving out key pieces of information I needed in order to plan my time and spend my money accordingly. There are so many instances of this I'm not even going to list them. I'll leave my flat with a mission, get these three things done!

And I return home with half of one to completion. But the comfort, ease, and automation of bureaucracy currently present in the United States are a few things I chose to sacrifice. The Czechs still run on a take-a-number system in the majority of public places. I might even go so far to say the Czechs run the take-a-number system. In the bank, the doctor, the post office. It's as if every moment of progress backslides because standing in a queue (weird) is a thing of the future, a thought which hangs out with "walls that aren't cement" and "my ATM not being an actual person." It's frustrating, but I chose this. The longer I live outside the United States, the less I want to go back.

I've changed positions a few times under my very slanted ceiling since I've been writing this. I'm in bed which is in a nook that resembles a mid-century-modern opium den with oversized pillows, slightly askew angles, subpar lighting, and a cup of rooibos. I feel safe in the nook. Kitty is snoring next to me and we both got our toenails cut today. I'm on the mend from being sick and I may have some changes on the horizon. Lateral move changes, not move-to-Sihanoukville changes. I hope the United States gets it's shit together soon. If it doesn't, you have my permission to burn it to the ground.

Dancing with St. Vitus

I feel like these updates are lacking the crescendo they used to have. Ever since I got my visa, things have quieted down quite a bit and I haven't been the busy bee I was when I arrived. Now I have a completely different agenda to more or less accomplish the same thing: achieve the correct paperwork and navigate the bureaucratic system for the right to legally work in the Czech Republic. I'm definitely on an expat plateau. Explateau? Whatever. 

The teaching job I've held since the beginning of this year has become wildly unpredictable. Usually when you imagine a teacher, you imagine someone who has the same hours as their students, maybe from 8 to 3ish in the afternoon. But language schools have to operate around life's other obligations, which are mainly work and family. There's no set schedule and sometimes students will schedule classes as they would with a therapist. Both receptionist and student have their pocketbooks out, flipping through dates to find a time in the future to conjugate verbs while still having fun. So this style of schedule leaves me to have no schedule of my own. Sometimes I work an hour in the morning and then six hours later I return to teach two courses in the evening. Other times I work from 2-8pm with no break. I don't have enough time to eat a meal or even a snack. I check my blood sugar in the middle of class because my schedule doesn't leave me time to sit down and actually pay attention to the inner workings (or non inner workings) of my dead pancreas. The limited and spontaneous availability I have has left me rescheduling appointments, not knowing if I can take gigs in other countries (it sounds drastic but it's like 60 miles away), and trying to create somewhat of a normal sleep schedule, which I've been chasing after for at least two decades. I don't have time for me and it's fucking exhausting.

Back in January, I interviewed for a manager position at AT&T. Yep, that AT&T. The telecommunications company has offices in both Brno and Bratislava, Slovakia, quite the surprise to someone who used to work at Comcast and thought positions with these places were limited to cubefarms in American metropolitan suburbs. The "interview" started with a group of roughly 30 bilingual people who were all interested in becoming a technical support specialist for the internet service AT&T offers to certain parts of the US. A few people had luggage with them as if they had come straight from the airport or train station, and I soon found out they actually had. A team lead told us to introduce ourselves, where we're from, and why we're interested in the job that requires English speakers B2 and above. Mostly everyone was Czech with a few people who actually flew in from France and Germany for the interview. It sounds ridiculous but when you think about it, flying anywhere in Europe doesn't take that long so they might as well attend an interview for a job in a country with a lower cost of living. Simply by the introductions, it was clear which candidates would be able to function in a job like tech support. When the pleasantries got all the way around to me, I realized I was the only native English speaker who had worked at a telecommunications giant. A lot of people stared at me. Why is this woman interviewing for a job she easily could have had in the United States?

To make sure we were actually capable of reading, writing, and speaking English, the team lead administered a test based on reading and listening. With twenty questions for each category, I found myself struggling with the most basic of knowledge. For instance, one of the questions involved listening to a woman describe a vacation to a beach, and we had to pick only one word to describe her experience. However, many options for the answer were synonyms. Casual, relaxed, breezy, low-key, and a few others were choices to choose from. But what exactly are they looking for? It wasn't the language that was throwing me off; it was the psychological mind games I needed to play in order to beat out non-native speakers for the same job. After everyone was finished, we were released for an hour and I did what any white girl with time to kill on her hands would do: go to Starbucks. 

The AT&T campus in Brno is located in a suburb known as Bohunice (BOH-hoo-nitz-uhh). There's a large sprawling mall and numerous medical facilities throughout the area of new commerce, and even though there's many plastic new shiny buildings out there, my favorite communism-looking building is right in the center of all of it. White with rails, simple windows, and a few panes of frosted broken glass, the medical center was a staple of what used to be sterile brutalism before 1989. I took some pictures and ordered a decaf latte in very poor Czech and waited for my pre-determined future at a new job with an actual schedule. 

When I returned from my hour alone, almost half of the candidates weren't to be found. Our team lead explained that those who hadn't passed the language test were dismissed from the rest of the interview. A few people looked at me as if I had something to do with their demise, but really I think they weren't surprised I passed, like a "good thing she survived" sort of a look. As a group, we were led into a lobby and then told to wait for an individual one-on-one interview with a manager. The woman I met had originally expatriated from the Philippines and married her Czech husband here in Brno. She looked at the experience I had listed from my CV and explained I was hired before I was even walked in that day. I spoke with her about submitting for the management position and she explained that once I complete the basic training and because of my native language, I can be transferred into the position. I also found out that being a native speaker was getting me about 15% more pay than the rest of the candidates who either had no technical support experience or mediocre English skills. 

What I'm most excited about is I'll be working at night for open business hours in the US. My shift will be from 11-8am so I can communicate with AT&T's customer base no matter which timezone they're in. Supposedly I'm also making more salary because the job is solely based at night. Night is when I'm most active. I'm writing this post at night, I have my best stupid ideas at night, and I try to at least learn something every night before bed. I can now offer my best potential on a Monday through Friday job. I never honestly thought I'd say "I want normal hours and zero unpredictability" but there I was interviewing for exactly that. The pay will be stable and the work will be familiar. 

In the coming weeks, I'll be filing for an employee card, which operates as its own visa. Right now, my trade license and my long stay visa both rely on each other for me to stay in the country and earn a living. But with AT&T, I'll be cleared by the Czech government to have an actual employer. The employee card needs to be renewed every two years, and I won't have to verify my funds with the government every year as they how much and when AT&T is paying me. They'll also provide my health insurance so it'll be included through my work and I'll no longer be on the socialized state system. Honestly the job can't start soon enough. Right now I'm in limbo between filing documents and waiting for my start date in May with no forward nor backwards progress and so we wait here on the plateau. 

The cool part about starting my job next month was that my mom and I both had the availability for her to come visit me for ten days. She's retiring in about ten months and she's looking forward to having the freedom to travel and spend time with family, meaning she has some vacation to burn through by the end of the year.

I was incredibly giddy the entire day. This was the first time anyone from the States had seen me in my new environment and I made sure to have things in a very presentable HGTV fashion. I literally cleaned my floors on my hands and knees, I dusted, vacuumed little nooks previously overlooked, and made myself into a real person who looks like they have the gumption and dedication to complete such a task, someone who really has their shit together. The last time I had been to the Prague airport was arriving on October 18th, almost six months ago now. It's is incredibly clean and almost looks like a convention center with giant cylindrical pillars and signs pointing to various amenities. They even had one of those ridiculously sized chess sets that you can play on the floor. And their bathroom was free. 

While I was on the train to Prague to pick her up, she was transferring in Frankfurt. Frankfurt, we both agreed, is the most absurd of European airports. Half-mall and half-travel checkpoint, it's an incredibly expansive place, leaving no room for tight connections. When I came over I also transferred in Frankfurt with a 90 minute connection and it was real tight, but my mom had some extra time to peruse duty-free whathaveyous and the vast plains of moving walkways. 

I toodled around in Arrivals with other people waiting for their respective passengers. The Prague Airport is divided into two terminals, flights from within the Schengen area and international flights from outside the Schengen. Since Frankfurt is Schengen, the hour long flight arrived on time. I watched the status on the arrival board of her plane, "Landed," Unloading," "Baggage." Spurts of passengers came out from behind the secure and opaque screen of customs a little at a time. Every little group I got excited and positioned myself unobstructed to be sure she could see me. At last she appeared with a tote and luggage. She looked so small next to everything she had packed for ten days of sightseeing in the Czech Republic. She looked tired, amazed. Everyone in my family is an experienced traveler but my mom had yet to see the former Czechoslovakia, and I felt settled in enough at this point to be somewhat of a reliable tour guide during her time here. 

We hugged for a long time. She's roughly my same height so our embrace with no intention of releasing seemed more reciprocal. After getting a good look at one another after our different yet varied travels, we got the first of many lattes at the airport while we waited for the bus to return to the main train station. We had about six hours of travel ahead of us with a bus, train, and then a cab ride back to my place in Brno. Our first meal consisting of Burger King fueled us for the journey and we arrived back home to a very excited kitty. 

The four days my mom was here in Brno were spent Easter market shopping, closely akin to the Christmas markets but with a bit more paganism sprinkled in with the food, spiced wine, colorful eggs, decorated switches used to hit girls in return for eggs, and porcelain products unique to Moravia. A lot of our time was spent sleeping in and relaxing with no set schedule because we knew Prague was going to kill us. We were planning on doing some serious damage in regards to sightseeing while in the Bohemian capitol. I traveled through the Czech Republic in 2009 but was on a pretty strict budget so my sightseeing was limited to cheap beer and Pall Malls. But our stay in Brno was eventful. My mom met a few of my fellow teachers at the school and one of my closest friends, we went to a cat cafe because Patrick just wasn't enough, and took a cruise through Spilberk Castle, one of many located in CZ. 

Czech Easter eggs designed by Jiri Zemanek

Over the few days my mom was in Brno, I realized that she's getting older. And yes, I'm aware of this phenomenon known as aging, but she was different from the last I saw her when we were crying in the airport in Seattle. She's slowed down a bit, both with her memory and her speed. Sometimes she would have a tough time keeping up with me during her visit. I've always been self-conscious of my speed when I walk because I've now had two ex-boyfriends who were quite eager to comment on it. I'm hardly ever in a rush. I've also spent so much time alone in Brno that I'm never around anyone that often to feel self-conscious with. Spending time with my mom made me more hyper aware, not just of my actions, but hers, as well. 

And then I started feeling guilty. Occasionally this pang of guilt or regret strikes and I feel like I made the wrong choice by moving so far away. In this case, I felt bad because I'm not with my mom anymore. I can't help her as she's getting older. I'm not immediately available if she needs assistance, reminders, or pertinent information. Staying in touch with her has been easier than I assumed but I think my shock of seeing her after almost six months made me realize I might not be able to see her in a time of need. It's the same thing with my new niece, Emily. I haven't met her yet and she isn't cognizant of her auntie who lives across the pond. I'm losing the chance to see her grow up, and sometimes it mades me incredibly sad and alone. A lot of expats will experience this while abroad and start to rethink their decisions, that their choice to separate from family and friends both geographically and emotionally will negatively affect others. Prior to leaving, I told myself I'd return to the US only under a few different circumstances: a family member getting seriously ill or dying, a zombie apocalypse originating in Russia, or a court order. Seeing my mom in her now more limited capabilities made me wonder if I'd be moving back to the US sooner than I thought, or what it will be like to have aging parents so far away, especially as the only child in one circumstance. 

I noticed this for most of my mom's visit but it didn't slow us down. In Prague we went to the Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral which has left me particularly awestruck over the last week. I'm not sure if it's the crazy gothic overtones or its age or the stained glass to which Mucha contributed, but to me it's this evil building that is tall, maniacal, ominous, and threatening. Not because of the religious curiosities tied to it, but the massive presence it gives to the Prague skyline. It's like in Independence Day when the alien ship slowly covers Washington DC except St. Vitus has graced Bohemia with its brooding presence for almost 1,000 years. 

My photos from St. Vitus

My mom also got to see me on stage while in Prague, and I'm really happy she got to see one of the best sets I've had since I've been here. I booked a spot on a weekly Tuesday showcase and found out at the last minute I was headlining. Vir Das, from Conan and fucking Netflix, was in town and asked for time but at the last minute had a scheduling conflict, so they asked me to fill in. Kind of cool, I'll probably use that as a credit from now on. The show takes place in a popular hostel and it's free for guests to attend, so the show often has a large audience whose common language is usually English. I met another comic from LA who was on the show and we discovered we had a lot of people in common between us, so it was fun to network so far from home. And my set went great. I couldn't have asked for a better slot or audience. The audience was engaged, paying attention, a little drunk but happy and focused. I'm so much more comfortable on stage than when I first arrived, nervous and anxious over material that worked so many times which might no longer have potential in a non-English speaking country. But I've adapted, and I think that's kind of what all this is about. 

My mom and I separated at the Prague train station where she took the bus to the airport and I a train back to Brno. I had to teach two classes after I arrived, one at a lighting company out in the suburbs and another at the school itself. The lighting company cancelled on me 40 minutes after I arrived due to some Chinese bigwig in town and I didn't have anyone show up for my second class. Of course, I get off the train and my world immediately becomes less predictable, less calculated. I have four days off for Easter as the Czechs observe Easter on Monday as well as Good Friday on, well, Friday. I've been nursing a sinus infection in the mean time and tomorrow I go into a 25 hour teaching week, and I'm sure I'll be dead when it's finished. Until then, I have some cheese to eat and a kitty to annoy. 

Ahoj, Polsko!

Last week I went on my first real comedy tour that wasn’t just two back to back nights in Wisconsin. Prague’s Kristyna Haklova founded Velvet Comedy and has been a force with whom to be reckoned in the European comedy scene. She organized four dates for her, myself, and Lucie Machackova over five days throughout Poland. We had all been discussing the shows, promotions, and transportation for a few months now, and this past weekend, it finally manifested into a Soviet-laden and bombastic spree through a country whose borders have been fought over for centuries.

Former Soviet countries (or Second World countries as they’re less commonly called) are often bundled into one specific group where many assume they’ve endured the same hardships. Sure, the Czech Republic and Poland both have had their fair share of annexations, battles, and fluctuating political borders, but Poland is different. While the country has adopted many Westernized ideas such as the hipster coffee and wine bar and the scalp massage parlor, the gray scenery is still a haunting spectacle reinforced with brutalist architecture, large scale monuments of mountain movers past, and little old ladies pulling shopping carts across the cobblestones behind them. In five days, we visited Wroclaw, Lodz, Warsaw, and Krakow, each with their own unique comedy clique and variation of the Polish street food known as “zapiekanka,” which is basically pizza on a baguette. Krakow is the only city I’ve been to in Poland and I was eager to see what the rest of the cities had to offer. When we weren’t on stage, we were either sleeping or taking a bus across the great plains of the country. Buses proved to be the most economical way to travel and we splurged for the train when we wanted extra legroom or a steadier wifi connection.

Starting and ending in Brno.

We all convened in Wroclaw, a city roughly four hours north of Brno. Lucie and Kristyna had come from Prague earlier in the day and I took three separate trains over five hours to meet with them. Jim Williams, another American expat comedian whose job is a hospital clown akin to Patch Adams, gave us his AirBnB for clean and hospitable accommodation. Located near the main train station and “Old Town,” Jim’s place was a short walking distance to the venue. With lots of stone and brick, the location for our first show was as if it was built by Hogwarts students for open mic nights and interpretive magic. More often than not, the shows I’ve done have been in a basement or cellar or bunker, which means no cell service. It feels strange to be immediately cut off from the world that’s so close above you, but it was nice not to have a handy distraction on me at all times. The crowd was warm and happy and extremely ready to laugh. They weren’t overly generous with their laughter, but all the jokes I wanted to land went as planned and my new stuff about my moving process from the US to CZ has been working well. We even met a few other American comedians based in Wroclaw, which is so strange to say considering most Americans have probably never even heard of the place.

After a great show and a night well rested at Jim’s, we caught a bus to Lodz. Three of the letters in “Lodz” have some sort of slash or line above them so in Polish, it’s technically pronounced “wouldge.” As Americans, we pronounce it “Loadz” and giggle when we say it. It was in Loadz (haha) we realized the more east we went into Poland, the less Westernized it was. This may seem like a fairly obvious observation where west is West and east is East, but the further east we traveled, conveniences, dry wall, and clean air weren’t found. Poland’s air quality is generally terrible. It’s hard to differentiate the smoldering smog from the manufacturing industry from the slate colored climate surrounding every city, but it added to this Soviet aesthetic which is only seen in certain spots in the Czech Republic. The old Cyrillic style font is used by many businesses, signs are trilingual in Polish, English, and Russian, and every surface could have used a decent pressure washing. Of course there are malls, Ubers, and KFC in Lodz, but you could tell the outer shell of most businesses and people have been through some shit.

Upon arriving, we found a Polish restaurant with a whiteboard menu outside and a very homey yet commie feel on the inside. The walls and ceiling were only half painted, the floorboards probably came with the original purchase of the home back in 19xx, and the tables were set up in what was at some point definitely a living room. The kitchen in this home was neither industrial nor steel, but instead a kitchen like you’d find in any two-bedroom home that served as the laboratory for all things pork and potatoes. The server only spoke Polish, but both Kristyna and Lucie are Czech and they were able to translate some Polish since the roots of both languages can be similar. We tried to order water but we were told there was none. Bottled water is common in many restaurants in Europe so initially we thought maybe she didn’t have any, but after some linguistic investigation, we were told there was no water period. Between our guestimations and Google Translate, we were able to order a variation of potato with some kind of meat off of a handwritten menu. My order was a large potato pancake filled with gravy and pork pieces that could have choked a horse. Like most Polish food, it lacked salt and spices commonly found in most kitchens. Lucie and Kristyna also received similar dishes of some rendition of potatoes and chicken cooked in an indistinguishable manner, so at one point we all traded dishes so we could each taste our poor navigation skills of a Polish menu.

Prior to the show we stayed in a “stack,” those giant Soviet style apartments with a billion units, the same floor plan in each unit, and an elevator in desperate need of speed, repairs, and safety. We stayed with Rui, a Portuguese resident in Lodz who works in IT. He explained that the reason the city can look so empty is because there are jobs available yet no one wants to move to Lodz and take them. He works specifically with translation and while he has as comfortable life, he seems like he could be happier elsewhere. Rui led us to our venue for the night, a hipster New York City style loft with white walls and a black floor. All of the chairs and tables were forged out of old shopping carts, barrels, and other items and materials you’d see in a challenge on Project Runway. The show wasn’t well attended, but the 15 people we did have were incredibly happy with the show, a few of which were other comics in Lodz. The idea of comics living everywhere is sometimes surprising, I guess because comedy is such an American thing to me, so while the buildings and food are very Polish, the humor is American. I’ve been trying out new material regarding the differences between “here and there,” a common topic for expat comedians to elaborate upon. Stereotypes and the fascination with different habits, people, languages, and culture is popular material for those wanting to hear stories from other places. In Warsaw, this worked the best, probably since I made fun of it a little bit.

Stacks, Night Woodge, and Kristyna and I with our flyer.

Warsaw is its own animal when it comes to Poland. Most cities look fairly industrious from the outside but they have a charming middle, like a Marxist Cadbury egg. When you emerge from the main train station, all you see is glass and steel. Large hotels, large billboards, and streets with sputtering old cars and an upsetting amount of lanes are common place in what’s nicknamed “The Big Village in the Middle of Nowhere.” It’s almost alarming. It was so busy and hectic it made Brno seem sleepy and a place where people would stroll instead of walk. Of course there aren’t many historical caricatures so often found in European capitols. Warsaw was the second most destroyed city of WWII behind Dresden and before Leningrad. Some say Warsaw looked like a sea of swept fire while it choked on its last battle cry. There was a lot of rebuilding to do in the years following 1945 but some villages and plots on the outskirts of “Nowhere” had clearly been abandoned for decades. I’m sure the Iron Curtain rusting over helped to create these giant intersections under which had tunneling pedestrians since there’s no time to pause the traffic of the busy streets for safety, but even in its new, shiny industry, Warsaw was weirdly haunting.

Outside Warsaw Glowny

Our show in Warsaw was in another dungeon close to some fake palm trees erected on a busy street. I still don’t know if this is a fun joke Poles have about their climate or something, but it seemed out of place (as opposed to a normal palm tree?) Loko was very kind with us and extremely busy. The show was oversold due to the hustle and bustle of another expat comic living in Warsaw, Christine Skobe. She hails from Canada and calls Warsaw a more temporary home as the air quality borders on opaque and it’s a considerable health concern for some. She also gave up her living room couch which three women managed to sleep on for a few hours in the middle of the night after some much needed showers. Christine was a saint and hosted the show with a few guest sets sprinkled in between our common sarcasm and jokes. The stage we were on was a pallet with a Persian rug over it. I had to be careful not to step in between the slots of the MacGyvered stage and end up in a Warsaw emergency room, but I had fun with it. At one point I think I said “This is Polish as fuck.”

I’m still not 100% confident doing my sober material over here, or anywhere for that matter. Drinking is a huge part of multiple cultures so when someone brings up that they don’t drink, people are sort of taken aback but in a way that mean mugs you with comments like “So why are you here, then?” It would be like someone moving to Seattle who doesn’t smoke weed. Oh wait, that happened to me too. I trudge through it because I want to be honest and tell my truth. Sometimes I talk about it at the start of my set so I can get it over with and move onto material which is more relatable. If I put it in the middle, people aren’t sure what to do. They feel bad for me, like they’re not sure if they should laugh. I felt like I had to discuss it since I had my three year sobriety anniversary on Valentine’s Day, the day I arrived in Wroclaw. I’ve thought to myself on occasion, “well what am I gonna do, not talk about it?” And not talking about it doesn’t seem like an option. Not drinking is now a part of me, a part of my identity but it doesn’t entirely create who I am as a human being.

Team Warsaw!

Everyone on the show did great and we retrieved more zapiekanka on the way home to Christine’s. In the morning we Ubered to the bus station to catch a ride to Krakow. We had the day off so there was no rush on getting into the city, but we had about five hours to spend in a cramped space and wanted it over with as soon as Polishly possible. Lucie, Kristyna, and I grabbed snacks from the “delikatesy” before boarding to trek across the plains to my favorite little city, which is technically the second biggest city in Poland.

Krakow is this weird mix of Old World charm, cranky Jews who refused to move or survived hell, well-preserved historical monuments, and carbohydrates. It’s my favorite place. With the cobblestone streets so jagged they could crack a cankle or two, the place known as Slavic Rome, Little Vienna, or the Florence of Poland has roughly the same cost of living as the Czech Republic but they have better war stories, street art, and graffiti. We stayed with a couple who are friends with Kristyna and live a short tram ride away from the city center and Kazmierez, the Jewish Quarter. We spent the evening wandering between brick synagogues, old iron gates, and neon signs featuring old communist facets while navigating the seas of obvious tourists. I don’t really go barhopping unless I want to try your best club soda on tap, but I was able to drink some amazing tea alongside some creative but grungy cocktails.

Walking alone in the winter became tiresome and upon returning to our temporary home, I slept for about 14 hours. Everyone reconvened for lunch the following day at a place we had walked by the night before. Israeli and Jewish food was their specialty and although I’ve never really had either, I believe it to be true. Afterwards we (they) got coffee from an Israeli teahouse and I drank rooibos alongside my fellow caffeine consumers. We took it easy for the rest of the day until our show at a punk bar near Old Town, or “Miasto Stare.” It felt so safe and serene to be back in Krakow walking under barren trees and cathedrals on the way there. Krakow feels like a less industrial Brno despite it being a bigger city. I’ll definitely be back, maybe in another nine years.

The last show wasn’t full and the audience wasn’t quite sure what to do with me, as I’ve discovered with Czech people. I don’t look European. I have fairly non-traditional features and I’m not afraid to present myself as such and augment my differences. There’s a very sleek “look” Central and Eastern European women strive for. Their hair is always very straight and pristine. They wear the same winter style of a puffy parka jacket, skinny jeans, knockoff Timberland boots, and minimal make up. So when a short sarcastic American woman treads on their turf, they become confused and gawk. I’m not even really sure it’s gawking; it’s probably more of a Resting Czech Face and I just perceive it to be negative ogling. When I go on stage, I feel like there’s the same silent judgement of “Make us laugh, yankee.” It might not be that aggressive, but there have been times people are so inquisitive about WHY I’m in their part of the world. They’re honestly astonished a person from a country like the United States of America has expatriated to a place of cold weather and even colder wars.

I stumbled through my set and caught my bus to Berlin. Actually, let me back track a minute.

Two days into the Poland trip, I was notified I could pick up my visa in Berlin (because Germany is the place a person needs to go to obtain legality in the Czech Republic?) or I could pay someone twice the amount it would take me to get there to do it for me. I cancelled one bus ticket and scheduled another, a nine-hour rumble through Southwestern Poland and Eastern Germany. Luckily I had two bus seats to myself so I managed to get roughly three hours of sleep while huddled in a fetal position. I watched the sunrise over Germany and safely arrived at the main bus station in Berlin, which featured many popular and whimsical characteristics found in most bus stations: used syringes, someone looking for half smoked cigarettes on the ground, and a person having a cell phone conversation at a really unreasonable volume. I took the U-Bahn (it sounds so much cooler than subway) to the Czech embassy and after 15 minutes of waiting, I FINALLY GOT MY VISA!

It's real!

But I couldn’t go home just yet. I hopped on a train in Berlin an hour later to head to the trade license office in Prague. They needed to see my visa so I could officially get my trade license, however it wasn’t going to be ready for two more days. Instead of making a trip all the way back to Prague later in the week, they kindly agreed to mail it to me in Brno. I spent roughly two hours in Prague and then hopped on a train back to Brno where I sorted through my pocket change of Crowns, Zlotys, and Euros. I returned much earlier than I assumed I would and got to spend the evening snuggling my kitty who barfed in my bed and on a Late Show with David Letterman t-shirt. Someday I’ll spend more than four hours in Berlin and actually get to see some of the city instead of just the walk from the train station to the embassy and back.

So I’m home now. Barfy kitty is in my lap and he’s been really clingy this week. My teaching schedule has picked up big time and I decided to be exclusive with just one school as organizing two separate schedules was becoming conflicting and ultimately costing me money. I’m happy I’m becoming close friends with the other teachers at my school and they’ve been happily able to accommodate me during the time while my visa was pending. I have three days off so I’m looking forward to sleeping, conquering an apparent black mold invasion in the window in my bathroom, and watching some recently released comedy specials. I also made plans with my mom and she’s coming to visit me in 25 days! We’ll be spending half the time in Brno relaxing and taking it easy and then half the time doing some major sightseeing in Prague. This week has been busy as fuuuuuuck.

But for now, hurray! I’m legal to work in the Czech Republic for the next year and no one can stop me.

Ahoj, Bratislava

Soooo it’s been a while, maybe even longer since the release of that shitty song by Staind. The New Year has produced multiple job opportunities, never-ending Central European bureaucracy, comedy shows, and my first jaunt to Slovakia.

And I'm still waiting to hear about my visa.

But during this seemingly infinite waiting period, I’ve taken two teaching jobs that are happily withholding my pay until I can become a legal Czech employee. They don’t have to pay me until further notice so I’m basically working for free, and hooooo boy do they know it. My schedule went from sleeping most of the day and going down a rabbit hole of late 90s Saturday Night Live videos to mapping out an entire timetable of trams and busses for my assignments all over Brno and its dingy yet incredibly charming suburbs.

I’m traveling to different companies in the metro area to help employees with their conversational skills, business English, and strange grammar unique to my native tongue. Most of the students I encounter are very intent on the idea that their English isn’t great but really it’s the opposite. I swear I had someone tell me, “My goodness, I am astonished at your surprise because I do believe my English is quite terrible!” but they aren’t speaking like a Soviet caveman. They’re actually speaking very well, better than me in some cases. I usually spend 45 to 90 minutes trying to produce some semblance of a lesson plan that revolves around discussing current events, politics, movies or other popular American media, and common dialogue from their place of work, but also HOW we discuss them. But what surprises me is that during every lesson, my students become so curious how a thirty-something woman from a booming yet not beaming country like the United States ended up in a place like Brno.

Brno has roughly 400,000 people. It’s been described to me as St. Paul without Minneapolis. There are enough people here to cause a very slight delay during morning traffic or a decent back up in any store in the mall on Sunday. Trams during peak hours are full and standing room only. This city as a pulse, and the only thing that would for sure kill it or at least slow its resting heart rate is something like Amazon becoming a budding and brooding feature. So when students ask me, “Why here?”, I usually respond with something that promotes the differences in cost of living while not having to live somewhere like Terre Haute, Indiana. I also explain that I’ve been through the Czech Republic before and liked it enough to move my life here. I’m not sure I have the balls (I don’t) to throw a dart at a map and expatriate to places like Kiribati or Lhasa or Ushuaia in Southern Argentina. But here I can live inside former communist architecture while practicing peaceful democratic resistance. Oh and that whole health insurance thing, too.

So right now, even though I come prepared each week with a loose lesson plan that can often derail like it did today when I had to explain the origin of the phrase “don’t drink the Koolaid,” my students are vastly interested in me and what I’m doing in the second biggest city in the Czech Republic. They also tend to ask me, “Why not Prague?” Prague seemed incredibly romantic at first. If I was going to write my own Eat, Pray, Love bullshit novel, my journey would probably start in Prague. The city (and most of the country) has amazingly preserved architecture. It wasn’t destroyed during the Second World War so a lot of the streets and flats and businesses are decades old and still in seamless operation. Prague carries a lot of the business in the Czech Republic but it isn’t all smokestacks and concrete. When I think of people in Prague, I imagine a woman wearing a silk bathrobe looking out her tall windows, tall windows that are emulated in the US because we can’t have things that are genuinely old so we destroy new places to purposefully make them look old. She has one of those stupid chunky blankets with the giant yarn draped around her. It’s snowing. There’s a dog outside leaving tiny footprints on the cobblestone sidewalk as a young boy chases muž’s best friend. The woman in the window snuggles her face into the giant yarn catastrophe while her gorgeous husband swoops in from behind her while carrying the smallest fucking espresso cup you’ve ever seen. She receives the bright white cup and saucer from within her Pinterest cape as they giggle over the idea of reading Faust in their giant sleigh bed in front of an exposed brick backdrop for the rest of the day. That’s Prague.

Brno is much more industrial, as are other cities here like Ostrava, Olomouc, and Plzen, so it leaves people wondering why I chose cooling towers over historical bridges. In short, it’s cheaper. But most of the expats in CZ are based in Prague, yet out in Brno it feels less like a vacation and more like an ongoing journey. If you live in Prague, you can go days without needing to speak Czech because everyone in your bubble speaks some derivation of English. I wanted to be around Czech people, not people who want to be around Czech people. I feel like a resident here. Somedays in Seattle I felt more like a tourist due to barely leaving the house during the throes of depression and anxious bullshit.

Teaching currently has me busy for roughly four days a week. I have some breaks midday and some downtime before hustling across town with a different set of folders for a different set of students. The nice part being is that if I notify the schools far enough in advance, I can take time off for comedy. This past weekend I ventured to Bratislava, Slovakia for a comedy show, my first time to the other half of the previous state of Czechoslovakia. Bratislava is a grungier version of Brno that could stand a good pressure washing. The city of 420,000 people is the largest in Slovakia and it is proving to be somewhat of a booming new metropolis. Slovakia is also on the Euro which catches people off guard. Surely the Czech Republic is on the Euro if Slovakia is, right? Wrong. CZ is on the Czech Koruna (crown) while Slovakia became a loose cannon and confused the fuck out of everyone by switching over to the popular Westernized currency. I exchanged money at the train station before I left, and two hours later, I walked off the train and onto a movie set designed for Liev Schreiber or Elijah Wood to extract their vengeance on the surrounding community for a betrayal of past generations. People think CZ is in Eastern Europe when really it’s in Central Europe, but Bratislava flirts with that misinformation much more, especially when people are confusing it with Slovenia.

Every European city east of Berlin has a section commonly referred to as “Old Town,” a four or five block district in or near the city center. At least one large church, forged statues and sculptures, and outdoor markets are picturesque both in person and on the overpriced postcards sold within the area. Bratislava’s Old Town is a nexus of hidden passageways featuring popular pubs, souvenir stores, flower shops, and coffee and wine bars. I’m not using the Oxford comma between “coffee” and “wine bars” because they are constantly featured together under one business. There’s a good intermingling of the old country’s hardened Slovaks enjoying their nightly pinot noir with younger travelers who wanted a piece of cake and tea (me). Since I arrived in the city at 4pm on a Sunday, a lot of businesses were closed and I only had roughly an hour of daylight remaining to take pictures, so I walked around and got lost in the caverns of brick and doors that weren’t rectangular in shape.

A few photos from my visit

The comedy show I was in took place at Goblin’s Pub, a dungeon-esque pub with plenty of beer and zero cell service. Upon arriving, I encountered a group of Irish dudes who were actually swinging their beer mugs from side to side with their arms around each other while they sang/yelled old Irish folk songs. Groups of football clubs, rugby teams, and bachelor parties will often come to Central and Eastern Europe to get their drink on because it’s so much cheaper. I was an economic drunk and 40 cents for a beer was nothing to sneeze at. I wrote out a setlist, similar to the setlist I was working off of the night before in Brno. I’m having a tough time deciding when to compromise my comedy. When I say that, I mean I don’t know whether to give the people what they want, which happens to be easy stereotypes and blanket statements, or do the comedy I really want to do and know I’m capable of. I want to have some measure of integrity without leaning towards an entire setlist of Blue Collar Comedy style jokes and tag lines. My set at Goblin’s was like most of my other sets in Europe; people like me and my enthusiasm, but if it’s not slightly off color in a way they want it to be, they’ll smile and have this sort of Resting Czech Face that I proceed to pander to for the remainder of my stage time. Doing 25 minutes is incredibly easy for me. Being confident in the jokes I’m telling to an audience expecting a certain style of humor is difficult.

I left the venue and hopped Bratislava’s tram back to the train station, took the train back to Brno, missed the night bus home, and called a Liftago, our version of Uber. My driver seemed happy I was communicating in broken Czech and he compromised with me by speaking some broken English in return. I checked my blood sugar when I got home realized my levels weren’t as predictable as they usually are. If I ever get sick or stressed, I can usually see it in my blood sugars before I actually feel or sense the onset of it coming. And by the time I had woken up a few hours later after falling asleep during an embarrassing Vikings loss, I was definitely sick. I had mono at 16 and ever since then I’ve been prone to sinus infections. I maybe get two to three a year where there’s a tremendous pressure in my sinuses, I feel and sound like I’m underwater, my neck and shoulders ache a bit, and I can’t focus. On Monday this week I was supposed to start at another school but had to defer my start since a) I’m not an asshole and don’t want to get other people sick, and b) talking for six hours a day while running all around the city by public transit wasn’t an option. I pretty much slept for three days and ended up being really hard on myself. I was supposed to start a new job and my body let me down, thus letting my employer down. I want to be ready and capable and worthy of work but this stupid sinus business wasn’t exactly allowing me to do just that. I felt worthless, not working and wanting to get better while trying to simultaneously practice the act of patience. And I fucking hate being sick. I turn into a swearing three-year-old sailor who has seen some shit, so much shit they can’t even drink anymore. Kitty and I slept and drank soup and as much water as we could, and today I’m almost back to 100%.

Today was my first day back teaching in four days and I learned that I was not the only teacher who was sick this week. Classes were cancelled, moved around, delayed, and rescheduled due to most of us combatting some type of a pseudo-plague. My Thursday class is my favorite. They’re a bunch of young dads who understand my puns and are eager to talk about politics, current events, traveling, and generic smalltalk used in getting to know one another. The 90 minutes goes by quickly and I don’t feel like it’s work because I’m learning, too. The second round of the presidential election in CZ is tomorrow. People throughout the country will pull their little grocery carts behind them while seeking to uphold the tenets of democracy or bring the country down to the level at which I left the United States. They told me about their candidates and the voting process. Brno (and the rest of the country I’m assuming) has a system that is similar to precincts, districts, and counties. People vote on a Friday by using paper and pen at a polling station, most often located in a school, and the results are then tabulated until the next morning on Saturday. I told them about the US having fifty different states, which means having fifty different sets of laws for how people vote. I explained the mail-in process for the state of Washington and how ballots are tracked and counted before the election. The two countries honestly don’t seem that different, and there has been an overwhelming turn out to support the guy who is more like a combination of Hillary and Bernie than President Fuckface (fingers crossed). One of the main areas of debate right now in CZ is the issue of "immigration." One tough thing about understanding the accuracy of politics and political views here is that the terms “immigrant,” “migrant,” “foreigner,” and “refugee” are all used interchangeably, so I went over the differences with my students and they agreed with their correct usage:

foreigner:

anyone who is of a different nationality or ethnicity than the place they are in presently

immigrant:

a person of a different citizenship or nationality legally seeking rights and citizenship in another country

migrant:

a person who is moving to a new country in seek of work, can be done legally or illegally, and is an economic based decision

and

refugee:

a person seeking asylum by escaping their country of citizenship due to political reasons (war is most common).

This class has been fun and valuable to me. In some ways, it feels like I’m getting paid to learn about my new home and the varying political climates by age group and geography.

My little victories are important here. I’ve had a master list of things I’ll eventually need to take care of, and today I got to cross of a major one: open a Czech bank account. Two banks have turned me away because I need to bring a Czech interpreter with me, even though I was told this in English. From my understanding, they don’t want to have a foreigner (refer to the above) signing a document if they can’t fully understand it. So today I went to a bank whose website is in both Czech and English and not by way of Google Chrome. It took about a half hour and the Czech banker was patient with my English and we both used Google Translate to ensure our definitions of terms were the same. Victory! I’ll get my “contactless card” in about two to three weeks. I’ve seen the magic of the contactless card at various stores: you’re supposed to hover the card over a hub and it will register as a physical swipe, but people end up needing to tap the hub numerous times and sometimes outright slam on it in frustration for it to register. Contactless!

So it’s after midnight. Tonight I had the energy to cook so I made this eggplant tomato basil…mash. I don’t know what to call it. Half the time I cook I’m coming up with something where all the flavors and textures are good but it doesn’t have a real name. I also put pepitas, capers, and cranberries in it and I shredded super good gouda on top. I’m going to be super farty tomorrow. Hopefully next week will be better than this week. I’m excited to officially have employment and an actual schedule. It will take some time to adjust and I’m just happy I don’t have to watch the fucking Pro Bowl this weekend at an absurd hour to distract me from doing great things. Oh yeah, and speaking of which,

Fuck you, Tom Brady!